I stared at the crude home before me. I recognized it. I recognized more from the flashes of memory I'd been experiencing than from any true memory.

It was small, gutters hanging loose and creaking in the breeze. One of the windows was broken, a small puncture like what would have been produced by a thrown rock. Spiderweb cracks spread across the pane from the impact. The garden was wild and untended, spindly dry weeds growing up where vegetable plants had died.

With trembling hands, I pushed aside the gate. It creaked in undead protest. I walked across the dirt path to the front door and paused. Zeb had done well. There was no escaping that this was the home I had known. If that was true, then it must be true that my mother lay beyond this door as well. I was tossed on a sea of confusion as I thought of this. This was the woman who had let my father take me away. She had let that man raise me a continent away. She had let me grow up not knowing the real love of a parent.

And yet, as I looked at the crumbling, decaying house and garden, I thought of what I could do for her. Sweep her away to Boston, make her comfortable, give her a fine house and servants. It would cost nothing against the wealth I commanded.

I pursed my lips with disgust as I realized the fantasy I was playing out. Of course, then she'd love me. Then she'd be my mommy and I could figure out what it was that had been broken in my father's care, heal it, and all would be well.

I cast the thoughts away, exorcising the demons that continued to plague my stunted heart.

I rapped on the door with sudden violence. The frame shook under the knock, dust weeping from the upper jamb.

There was no answer. I waited and knocked again. My excitement built despite myself.

Why had she stayed? It made no sense. Why would she be living here like this? Even if I had just been my father's bastard, even if this woman had never been his wife, wouldn't he have paid her some stipend worth more than this pathetic existence?

I knocked again. She must not have been home. I sighed and turned back to the street. I sank to the ground to wait. I had only until the next morning before I would have the duty of guiding a train back across the land. I needed to see her. Even if I had to wait all day and night, I would do so.

I became lost in my thoughts, barely tracking the stretching shadows and fading light. My stare was empty. I watched ants carefully dismantling the corpse of a much larger, very deceased beetle. I watched them, tracking the motions, and feeling the feelings that clung to me.

I wanted a drink.

I was startled as a voice broke my dreaming.

"What are you doing there?"

I looked up. An older woman stood on the path beyond the wall. She stared at me with unveiled suspicion. "What are you doing here? You're not from around here."

I said, "I… I'm a messenger."

The woman stared hard at me. "Brought a message for herself, did you?"

I nodded slowly, trying to decipher the meaning in the woman's narrowed eyes.

She said, "A letter for old Gretta?"

I nodded again.

She said, "What's the letter about?"

I said, "I… that's confidential. It's for her eyes only."

She spat on the ground and turned her face down the street. "Burt! Ken! Get over here, there's a vagrant trying to move into Gretta's old place."

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I stood up as two young men obeyed the older woman's summons. They were thick-shouldered men. Manual laborers.

I spoke quickly, raising my hands. "I'm no vagrant! I've come to see Gretta."

The woman sniped at me, "Then you'll be needing a shovel. On with you now, this is no place for a drifter to be setting up camp."

I said, "I'm not a drifter. Wait, what do you mean a shovel?"

The suddenly pathetic expression that took hold of my face must have touched the older woman. Her scorn fled for a moment as she regarded me. Then she spoke, still firm, still disdainful, but softened. "Gretta's dead a year, young fella. Nobody would be sending her letters."

I felt the air go out of me and my shoulders slump. I heard myself asking, "What became of her?"

Burt and Ken were looking to the old woman with interest, attack dogs without a command. They couldn't know I could break both their bodies with one slap of my hand. I had no desire to inform them of the fact.

The old woman said, "A burglary. We had a problem with break-ins about a year back. Drifters, wouldn't you know…"

She stared at me with accusation. Then she said, "Was Gretta known to you?"

I shook my head slowly. "Not really…"

The strength came back to her and the next words were once again imperative. "Then on with you! This is no place for you."

I did as she asked. I shuffled away, my footing guiding me back over the path I had followed up. My mother, if she was my mother, was dead. With her went the answers I might have found. I had come here for nothing. Katya grieved without the support of her supposed friend so that I could be here. They would lower Lauren's body into the earth in my absence, all so that I could find another dead woman.

As I descended the street I stepped out of the way of a man sweeping outside the front of a house. I was distracted as I did so, staring at my feet. I only glanced up from habit, wanting to identify the posture and nature of the being near me.

I stopped in my tracks, my brows lifting.

"What is it?" the man with the brush asked.

I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no words. I felt some small rush of enthusiasm bubble back in me.

The man with the brush was around my age. And he bore a harelip.

I said, "You… you grew up around here?"

The man said, "Most that live here did just that. Not many of us getting out of here. Cradle to grave, working for the man."

I pointed back to the house, where the old woman still stood, watching me. "Did… did you know Gretta?"

The man looked up the hill, furrowing his brow to peer through the orange glare of the dying sun's light. "Gretta? Oh, yeah. Not well, but I knew her. We all know each other around here. Sad that about Gretta. She deserved better."

I said, "Did… did she have a son?"

The man screwed up an eyebrow at me, confused by my questioning. But all the same, the sparkle of fond memories glimmered in his eyes. "She did at that."

I said, "You were friends with him? You used to play together."

The man held the brush in both hands. It wasn't an aggressive posture. He held the brush upright, as though he was resting his weight on its handle. But I had the sense he was gripping it for protection as well. These were strange queries from the mouth of a stranger.

But he said, "Yeah… we sure did. Was a long time ago now. Long time ago. He was my best friend when I was little."

I said, "What… what was his name?"

The man continued to eye me. But he went on, maybe intrigued, maybe humoring the lunatic drifter before him. "Tiberius."

I felt a thrill of elation run through me. I couldn't say or know why. I just felt this exciting burst of energy pulse up from inside. He had known me. It was validation. The memory flashes were real. I had been here once. There was a version of me that had lived and played before father had withered me for want of love, like a drying plant on a windowsill.

I said, "What happened to him?"

"Rich man took him."

I said, "His father."

He did a double take, then gripped his brush all the tighter. "You mishear me? I said a rich man took him. What would he be doing living here if he had a rich dad? Don't be daft."

I said, "But… if the man who took him wasn't his father… then who… why?"

The bubbling elation collapsed in on itself. It had never hung together exactly, but it had been the fabric of my reality. The incompleteness of my origin story was fertile ground for the sudden frightening doubt the man was planting in me.

The man inspected my face carefully. His pupils dilated, his jaw worked, chewing the air. Was he recognizing me too, after all this time?

As he inspected my face, he continued, "Rich man. He came around one time when I was little. Went all around the neighborhood with a wagon, looking for boys. Don't know why. Think folk assumed it was so he could diddle 'em, but what could poor folk like us do about that? We couldn't stand up to him."

I said, "To diddle… he was collecting boys…"

His words made me dizzy. I felt the world spinning at the edges of my vision.

He said, "Girls too. I was only a boy. Don't remember it so good. But he was going to specific houses. Like he had a list. I remember, a bit, 'cause my ma asked him if he'd buy me. He asked her who my dad was, who her dad was, then he said no. My ma was plenty disappointed about that."

I was wrestling to select just one of the thousand questions that screamed for attention in my mind when we were interrupted by the man with the knife.

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